piątek, 25 czerwca 2010

I'm gonna write this post only in English because it's gonna be a long one:P.

As I promised here is a set of scripts I've called Rigging Tools. Those scripts are really useful in facial rigging. This is a v1.0 because I have some ideas in mind that I might add in future versions. But just with this small set of tools you can really speed up your work.

I will just list what you can do with those tools:

Parenting group - lets you parent selected object(s) to a Point Helper with or without inheriting the hierarchy.

Set points - this tool just creates points and aligns them with the objects. Update option lets you update(size, point's look) already created (and selected) points.

Make stretchy bones - As it says it creates stretchy bones of selected chain of bones.

Freeze Position, Rotation - freezes the rotation and position of an object.

Info section - displays the information about position and rotation of an object. Displayed values are from controller that is set to active.

Control - is an viewport control that is helpful in facial rigging. It has already assigned limit controllers.

Spinners - these buttons create Empty modifier (optional) and assign set of spinner as custom attributes to is. Face button is in progress. It is gonna create whole UI for facial control.

Face Controller - Controller used in facial bone based system. First you need to pick an object that is going to be a control. After picking and clicking on the the Create button, script copies(optional) the controller you selected and place it in place of selected point in bone based system. Then it creates some wiring structure. It ends up with a fully working control for facial control.

How-To video will be posted tomorrow because now i'm leaving to see the match:P.

niedziela, 6 czerwca 2010

Bone Based Facial Rig of mine. Second method of facial rigging after blended morph targets. I have found this method better then the last one. It is much faster after you have scripts that I will post soon. Those will really speed up your work, only thing that remains the longest to work on is skinning. What is more, this method once done well provides you a lot of fine face expressions, while in the blended morph system you have to create LOTS OF(!!!) targets to achieve the same effect. Another important thing is that the Morpher is additive modifier so the more targets you create the more difficult work becomes. The targets starts to overlap.
When choosing the method it all depends on the purposes of your character how much he will have to express. If it is just a few phonemes or just a smile, it is faster to use morpher with a few targets in other cases bone base system is what you need. It may take longer to finish it at the first time without scripts but after like I said the Skinning part is the longest.